How Janine Middleton got corporate Australia to support same-sex marriage

Janine Middleton: “If I could have doorknocked everyone in Australia, I would have done it."
Wolter Peeters

by
Lissa Christopher

Janine Middleton has some pointed lessons for business as they ramp up their engagement on social issues. When she volunteered her services to Australian Marriage Equality (AME), she was characteristically forthright.

“I said, ‘I am straight and I am an ex-investment banker and I vote Liberal. I live in Mosman and I never leave the house without my pearls on. But if there is anything I can do, I would really love to help.’”

That was September 2014. By December, she was the organisation’s co-chairwoman and is credited with persuading some of Australia’s biggest corporate players to support the cause.

“We would not have marriage equality if it was not for corporate Australia and we wouldn’t have had as much support from corporate Australia if it weren’t for Janine,” says Alex Greenwich, Independent member for Sydney in the NSW Parliament and co-chairman of AME. “I saw her in action, talking to consulting firms, banks. Janine spoke their language. They took her seriously. She was able to communicate better than a leftie about why supporting marriage equality was good for business.”

Janine Middleton, the former JPMorgan banker and chief business side organiser of Australians for Marriage Equality, says her personal convictions about marriage equality are the product of empathy.

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Middleton worked for AME full-time and unpaid. Along with her trademark pearls, she brought 25 years’ experience in banking – she is a former managing director of JPMorgan in London – a thick skin (her words) and a ferocious work ethic. She doesn’t sleep a great deal and her work days often start at 3am.

“We all worked hard but I have never seen anyone with a work ethic like Janine’s,” says Greenwich.

Not everyone at AME took to Middleton, however. “There were some people who didn’t speak to me for months because I was everything they were opposed to,” she says. Quite a few members of the team were vegan and she admits she might not have helped things along by turning up to a few AME events wearing fur.

When Middleton began lobbying for corporate support, AME had about eight businesses signed up to its cause. Mere weeks later, the organisation was able to place an ad in newspapers featuring the logos of 55 organisations that supported marriage equality. A few weeks after that, Middleton placed another ad featuring 153 logos. The budget didn’t run to a third, even larger ad but by then it didn’t matter.

“We could never put a value on those two ads,” says Middleton. “They gave us profile. They got everyone talking about marriage equality, even if they were saying: ‘Why are corporates talking about marriage equality?’ ”

‘Working the suit’ effect

The way Middleton tells it, a lot of businesses were waiting for an opportunity to take a stand. “There was no leadership coming from Canberra, and the CEOs, whether they were LGBTI or straight allies, knew they had to do something because their employees were demanding it. [Corporate CEOs] can read the pulse of Australians better than anyone in Canberra and they knew the time had come.”

As companies announced their support for AME, she says they reported an overwhelmingly positive response from staff.

“People were saying they were proud of the company they worked for, sometimes for the first time. And Millennials really want their companies to stand for something.”

Middleton attributes her own powers of persuasion in large part to appearances.

“I looked like one of them. I walked into offices in my suit and pearls, and saw the relief on people’s faces.”

Boards tended to be tougher to convince than CEOs, because they were often comprised of older people, often men, who were more concerned about potential shareholder discontent. She focused on the business benefits of inclusion and real-life stories about exclusion, and encouraged older people to talk to younger people. She practised on taxi drivers: one young man who had voted no in the postal ballot asked how he could go about changing it to yes.

“I worked with some companies for two years to get them over the line,” she says. “There were some people who were very challenging that I never got to turn. But we never named anyone who didn’t sign up.”

Middleton’s personal convictions about marriage equality come from her banking career where she saw many gay and lesbian colleagues hiding who they were and who they loved. She watched a lesbian friend who was dying of cancer put precious energy into hiding her relationship with her partner during the final hours of her life.

Undaunted by social taboos

When Ian Thorpe came out, Middleton wept. “My husband was thinking, erm, what’s going on? My thinking was if it takes that long for people like Ian Thorpe to come out, then what about the kids in the western suburbs where I grew up?” That’s when she approached AME. “If I could have doorknocked everyone in Australia, I would have done it. I just wanted people to understand,” she says, shaking a pearl-wreathed forearm for emphasis.

Middleton remains co-chairwoman of AME and is now also the inaugural CEO of The Pinnacle Foundation, a charity that provides university scholarships and mentoring for members of the LGBTI community.

Paul Zahra, a former David Jones chief executive and global retail adviser, is Pinnacle’s chairman. “I saw her fighting for a cause where she had nothing to gain personally. It takes a very special person to be an ally of a group that some may argue has a social taboo associated with it,” he says. “She won my heart and mind, and I wanted to work with her.”

Zahra says there is much more to be done. “We believe the best way we can assist the LGBTI community and pull people out of disadvantage is through education.”

Business may as well ready their wallets now. Fundraising is a major part of Middleton’s brief and the pearl-swathed persuader feels as strongly about tertiary education as she does about marriage equality.